With only nine feature films to his name, director Jack Clayton seems all but forgotten, apart from his 1974 film of The Great Gatsby, which was not his best work, and Room at the Top, his contribution to Sixties realism.

Clayton was great with actors, and this downbeat little character study has heartbreaking performances.

It’s set and filmed in Dublin. American widower James Madden (Bob Hoskins) takes Judith Hearne (Maggie Smith) to the Shelbourne Hotel, 27 St Stephen’s Green. It was in Room 112 of the Shelbourne Hotel, (now the hotel’s Constitution Suite) that Michael Collins drafted the constitution of the Irish Free State in 1922, and the hotel duly appears in Neil Jordan’s Michael Collins, with Liam Neeson as the famous Irish nationalist.